[The Long Dream is] a novel throbbing with the same racial traumas that have done much to compel for its author a large interracial audience ever since Native Son, the classic Negro novel of social protest. That book appeared in 1940, and, judging by his latest, Richard Wright is angrier than he was then.

The color motif dominates all of Mr. Wright's novels to the extent that the social-historical context outweighs the literary. It is not only because The Long Dream is a more uneven work than the poignant Native Son that it is so disappointing. Hot with the fumes of an incendiary counterracism, it could not have chosen a less propitious time to be "timely." Certainly it is the most racist of all of this author's anti-racist fiction.

Richard Wright's work has in general been more race-conscious than social-conscious; its crusading timbre has helped to placard him for...